The crooks, who have discovered a way to find the details of some cards, are making payments to themselves through fake shop accounts.

Thousands of Lloyds Bank Avios credit card holders have been affected, as we revealed last week.

UK customers found cash was being spent on their Lloyds cards in U.S. stores even though they hadn’t travelled to America.

While the payments appeared on customers’ bank statements alongside the names of real shops, they were actually going to fraudsters’ accounts.

A Lloyds Bank spokeswoman says: ‘We apologise to customers for any inconvenience. The small number of impacted customers will receive a full refund of monies taken fraudulently.’

Last week we reported how customers with a Lloyds Avios Rewards credit card were urged by an industry expert to check their statements after reports of a string of fraudulent activity.

Rob Burgess, founder of credit card website Head for Points, had a spate of people contact him after seeing fraudulent transactions appear on their statements.

The cards are the American Express version of Lloyds Avios credit cards and the majority of the fraud appears to be in the form of contactless payments in the US.

Mr Burgess told This is Money: ‘The extent of the fraud came to light after our readers started to post comments about transactions that were appearing on their cards from stores in the USA. More than 50 readers posted their experiences.

‘The Lloyds Avios Rewards card is popular because it is the only rewards credit card in the UK to offer 0 per cent FX fees when travelling and reward points on top.

‘It isn’t clear if Lloyds, American Express or a third party is responsible, but Lloyds is certainly responsible for not automatically notifying all cardholders of a potential breach.’

Familiar pattern: Many of the fraudulent payments have been made in New York

Earlier in the year, This is Money revealed how some customers who use the card, enticed by the bank’s offer of Avios points that can be redeemed for flights, saw balances vanish – and were told it will take fully six months to rectify.

After the recent spate, one customer told Head For Points ‘About a week ago my wife’s Lloyds Avios Amex card was used fraudulently by someone over in New York for a few different things so we called Lloyds to talk about this and get the card cancelled and a replacement sent out.

‘Logged into her account yesterday to find that my supplementary Amex was also used fraudulently earlier this week, also in New York.

‘As my card has been sitting in a drawer at home and my wife’s has been in her purse the whole time, certainly haven’t been nicked and cloned or anything like that.’